Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS Comput Biol. 2010 Sep 9;6(9):e1000903. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000903.
Subjects typically choose to be presented with stimuli that predict the existence of future reinforcements. This so-called 'observing behavior' is evident in many species under various experimental conditions, including if the choice is expensive, or if there is nothing that subjects can do to improve their lot with the information gained. A recent study showed that the activities of putative midbrain dopamine neurons reflect this preference for observation in a way that appears to challenge the common prediction-error interpretation of these neurons. In this paper, we provide an alternative account according to which observing behavior arises from a small, possibly Pavlovian, bias associated with the operation of working memory.
被试通常会选择呈现出预测未来奖励存在的刺激。这种所谓的“观察行为”在许多物种中都有体现，包括在选择代价高昂的情况下，或者被试无法通过所获得的信息来改善自己的处境的情况下。最近的一项研究表明，中脑多巴胺神经元的活动以一种似乎挑战了这些神经元的常见预测误差解释的方式反映了这种对观察的偏好。在本文中，我们提供了一种替代解释，根据这种解释，观察行为源于与工作记忆运作相关的一个小的、可能是条件反射的偏差。
